A packet-switching satellite emulator: a proposal about architecture and implementation

The paper contains a proposal about the design and implementation of an on-board satellite packet-switching emulator. The paper lists the requirements of the emulator that have been followed for the design and that will represent the guidelines for the implementation of the features not yet concluded. The characteristics of the emulator architecture are described, including motivations, advantages and drawbacks of the architectural choices. Particular attention is given to the need of a having a real-time behavior and an efficient transport of the information. Implementation details are reported. The support to the real-time over the Linux operating system, on which the implementation is performed, and the utilization of virtual tools to model the ACE emulator interfaces and to map the address at the data fink layer are of particular interest. Neither the design or the implementation of the emulator is fully concluded, but some interesting results, essentially about computation for now, are already available and are reported.